Astak Mentor eBook readers with WiFi and Touchscreen (read-only)

[DaleDe]

I would agree that they low balled the prices but I don't think it was intentional. There were not very realistic but it established an expectation and then that is bad for the market. When I first saw the announcements I commented that the prices were too low to be true but then people believe what they want to believe.

Dale

[6charlong]

Originally Posted by soilwork

http://www.teleread.org/blog/2008/06...ossible-in-08/
I just found a relevant article from Teleread.

Thanks for the link! Having a target date--even a tentative date like July 28th--is a big help for planning. For me the important news is that they will release the 6-inch Mentor with touch screen at the same time as the base model 5-inch. Good news all around.

[soilwork]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

I would agree that they low balled the prices but I don't think it was intentional. There were not very realistic but it established an expectation and then that is bad for the market. When I first saw the announcements I commented that the prices were too low to be true but then people believe what they want to believe.
Dale

I agree that the price increase may not be intentional. The earlier price estimate was based on e-ink panel alone and now they plan to incorporate Flexi glass to make screens durable, so the price increase seems reasonable.

However, regardless of valid reason to do so, raising price than expected leads to disappointment which can be detrimental to companies. Since Astak products are more attractive than its competitors in term of price even with the increased price, they are creating unnecessary disappointment that they could have do without if they had accurate price prediction.

Anyway, we are talking about the disappointment among Mobilereaders who followed this thread before today so it may be relatively small crowd. General public may not know about this and I hope Astak have a good plan to make people aware of their products through effective marketing (advertising, promotion, distribution, and word-of-mouth) by properly emphasizing their products' strengths.

[Mindy]

Originally Posted by Robertb

The very latest I have is 5 inch in late July, 6 inch in mid-September, and 9.7 inch in late October. We are trying to nail all of this down right now!

Posted on the same day as the Teleread article but with two different dates (er, make that two completely different months) for estimated launch of the 6"? (Also implication that 5" will have touchscreen and wifi which I understood would not be the case)

Colour me confused - either the article is badly written, badly researched or nobody has a scooby what's going on any more. Going to go hide under a rock for another few weeks till some of the finer details get smoothed out methinks.

[Luigino]

Uhm.... as in Teleread's article comment it says, "hardware is unimportant", that's what I am pointing on...I would be happy with a 6" mentor without WiFi, neither Bluetooth but at least with rechargeable battery and memory card support. I hope to find a model like this for a price like $200 or a bit less because for me personally I don't really need a WiFi when I have already a 2Gb SD where to put tons of books and I can put or delete books from my laptop inserting the SD in the internal reader... OK the TOP reasons I say that is I am not rich to spend everything since I live alone so you can get in mind about "corner the biggest piece of market"....

Ciao!
Luigi

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Mindy

Posted on the same day as the Teleread article but with two different dates (er, make that two completely different months) for estimated launch of the 6"? (Also implication that 5" will have touchscreen and wifi which I understood would not be the case)

Colour me confused - either the article is badly written, badly researched or nobody has a scooby what's going on any more. Going to go hide under a rock for another few weeks till some of the finer details get smoothed out methinks.

I think they goofed slightly in writing that article on TeleRead. Robert has always said that the 5" and 6" would be a month apart, and the 5" would have no extra features.

[cftall]

Lookin foreward to your reader

[spthomas]

Can't wait for the 9.7" version, sucks we'll have to wait till October. But better get it right the first time!

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Luigino

Uhm.... as in Teleread's article comment it says, "hardware is unimportant", that's what I am pointing on...I would be happy with a 6" mentor without WiFi, neither Bluetooth but at least with rechargeable battery and memory card support. I hope to find a model like this for a price like $200 or a bit less because for me personally I don't really need a WiFi when I have already a 2Gb SD where to put tons of books and I can put or delete books from my laptop inserting the SD in the internal reader... OK the TOP reasons I say that is I am not rich to spend everything since I live alone so you can get in mind about "corner the biggest piece of market"....

Ciao!
Luigi

Luigi,

I agree. I've not found it too difficult to trot over to my computer, buy-and-d/l the ebooks I want, load them onto the SD card and insert said card into my Cybook. And in America, so I presume this to be the case in most industrialized countries, it would not be all that difficult to find computers elsewhere (if I were to travel) which I could use to accomplish the same. I'll agree that for some people, the ability to scrawl an annotation in the ebook might be necessary, so a touch-screen might be nice - but not a critical item. Were I able to get a sub-$200 e-ink reader in 6" screen size, I'd be a happy camper. Erm... Make that sub-$150!

Derek

[Walk Broad]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Luigi,

I agree. I've not found it too difficult to trot over to my computer, buy-and-d/l the ebooks I want, load them onto the SD card and insert said card into my Cybook.... I'll agree that for some people, the ability to scrawl an annotation in the ebook might be necessary, so a touch-screen might be nice - but not a critical item. Were I able to get a sub-$200 e-ink reader in 6" screen size, I'd be a happy camper. Erm... Make that sub-$150!

Derek

I'm looking forward to the basic model as well.

I don't need all the bells and whistles either, just a good, solid device to read at a good price.

Hooking up to my desktop/tablet for downloading isn't going to be the death of me.

Besides, it'll keep my bank account happy if I don't have the option of "impulse" buying

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Walk Broad

I'm looking forward to the basic model as well.

I don't need all the bells and whistles either, just a good, solid device to read at a good price.

Hooking up to my desktop/tablet for downloading isn't going to be the death of me.

Besides, it'll keep my bank account happy if I don't have the option of "impulse" buying

I don't think most people *need* these bells and whistles - they just want them so they don't feel "left behind".

And I'm in complete agreement about the "impusle" buying. I've got enough trouble keeping money in there as it is!

Derek

[seajewel]

I really want the 9.7, but honestly, I would be very very very very surprised if it came out in October, especially with a flex screen. I really wish, as other people have said, that Astak had been able to roll out a 6" version. I feel like numerous delays and more developments and new ideas are just not that great.. I feel like my chances of actually getting an Astak Mentor are going down the drain every time I hear of new bells and whistles. I appreciate the effort involved in trying to make it great, but.. I honestly think 6" is the lower limit of what I would want in an ebook reader, and 8" like the iLiad would be perfect. I ended up buying a Sony yesterday, but I want more screen real estate. and battery life is important. if the iLiad had a battery life more like the Sony, I might have been tempted despite the price tag.. maybe.

Also, yes, I don't know how the initial projection of $350 came from. Just considering the iLiad and the price of all the other existing ebook readers, I couldn't imagine how Astak could bring out ebook readers that are so cheap and in so little time. Not surprised at the new price tag, at all.

Originally Posted by spthomas

Can't wait for the 9.7" version, sucks we'll have to wait till October. But better get it right the first time!

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by seajewel

I really want the 9.7, but honestly, I would be very very very very surprised if it came out in October, especially with a flex screen. I really wish, as other people have said, that Astak had been able to roll out a 6" version. I feel like numerous delays and more developments and new ideas are just not that great.. I feel like my chances of actually getting an Astak Mentor are going down the drain every time I hear of new bells and whistles. I appreciate the effort involved in trying to make it great, but.. I honestly think 6" is the lower limit of what I would want in an ebook reader, and 8" like the iLiad would be perfect. I ended up buying a Sony yesterday, but I want more screen real estate. and battery life is important. if the iLiad had a battery life more like the Sony, I might have been tempted despite the price tag.. maybe.

Also, yes, I don't know how the initial projection of $350 came from. Just considering the iLiad and the price of all the other existing ebook readers, I couldn't imagine how Astak could bring out ebook readers that are so cheap and in so little time. Not surprised at the new price tag, at all.

Depends upone how much of a discount Astak would have been getting from Netronix for a volume order. If Astak were willing to pony up $1,000,000, I'd almost guarantee they'd get the 6" models for less than $190/unit. Of course, they'd still have to install their custom firmware, and they'd probably have to re-box into a nice package and all, so that would add to the per-unit cost that Astak would have to cover with their 'retail' price. Further, while Walmart and Costco probably don't expect a 50% margin on these devices, they'll expect *better* than the couple of percentage points that NAEB is getting.

Derek

[HPG]

Originally Posted by alanastoz

* When you enter the CC#, it is converted into a hash value that is stored on the device. Any ebook purchased with that CC# is now available without re-entering.

Thanks, alanastoz and Jack -- so the CC# only needs to be entered once per device and per CC#. That's helpful, although quite how the numbers are to be entered still seems a bit obscure to me at this stage, not having one of these gizmos to play with

I guess, lurking under all this business of having to choose between a Mentor or a Litebook, is the format wars question: which format has the greater range of reading material (including the dreaded DRMed stuff): MobiPocket or eReader? I imagine this must have been debated to death elsewhere in these forums -- is there a useful synopsis anywhere than anyone knows about?

Hugh

[Jack B Nimble]

Originally Posted by HPG

I guess, lurking under all this business of having to choose between a Mentor or a Litebook, is the format wars question: which format has the greater range of reading material (including the dreaded DRMed stuff): MobiPocket or eReader? I imagine this must have been debated to death elsewhere in these forums -- is there a useful synopsis anywhere than anyone knows about?

It's all a matter of simple, logical deduction... I cannot read secure Mobi on my mac, therefore Mobi must have the better selection, right?

On the off chance some of you might want more empirical evidence, I did a quick search at BooksOnBoard.com, and they stock some 25k books for eReader and 80k for Mobi. Even Fictionwise, which owns eReader, stocks more secure Mobi books than eReader, though a smaller selection and much smaller difference (25k vs. 21k), however that may not be an accurate comparison as I do not know if they have finished incorporating all of the eReader stock into the Fictionwise site. The multiformat books at Fictionwise, downloadable in both these formats and several others, total 17k for both, of course.

This is hardly a comprehensive survey, of course, but since those are the places I shop, it'll work for me.

Jack